Our Team
Chase Franklin
Beginning with flickering green PC screens, Chase has had the good fortune to be involved with many industry defining technologies, products and businesses. Throughout his career he’s played key roles in the development of market leading software products, secure payments and e-commerce technology and business process transformation.
Chase is keen to share his experience and expertise with the next generation of entrepreneurial teams as they embark on the journey of their lives. A resident of Seattle, Chase is a startup advisor and CEO coach, angel investor and management consultant. Previously he was CEO of Daptiv Inc., Chief of Strategy for Content and Media at Amdocs Ltd., co-founder and CEO of Qpass Inc. Prior to co-founding Qpass in 1997, Chase spent more than a decade at Microsoft in key product development and management roles. He is the recipient of multiple patents relating to the design of Microsoft and Qpass technologies.
The history of Qpass is one of two distinct halves: four years of explosive “get big fast” growth abruptly ended by the implosion of the dot-com era, followed by a transformative restart. In early 2001 Chase and his team initiated a radical transformation of the company, beginning sadly with a staff reduction from 220 employees to 55. Over the next 18 months the team restarted and recapitalized Qpass, while completely reconceiving its technology. The company emerged well capitalized and with a carrier grade middleware solution positioned to allow mobile network operators to launch their new premium digital products business. By 2006 Qpass systems managed the majority of mobile digital commerce in North America, a market then worth $15B.
In 2014 then Governor Gregoire appointed Chase to the Board of Trustees of Western Washington University, where he is pleased to serve the citizens of Washington State. Chase earned his degree from Western Washington University in Mathematics and Economics in 1986.
Shehryar Khan
Shehryar has spent his entire 24 year career serving clients.
After studying computer science at Allegheny College in the early 90s, Shehryar moved to Seattle and spent the next 3 years building mission critical enterprise systems for clients of NeXT Software Inc.
In 1999, Shehryar founded a boutique software engineering firm called Übermind. He worked his way up the ranks becoming the CEO in 2005, leading the transformation of Übermind into one of the world’s leading mobile focused digital agencies.
At Übermind the formula was quite simple - engineers with deep technical chops working alongside brilliant designers in an environment that allowed people to channel their backgrounds, personal interests and passion, utilizing a methodology that encouraged speed and agility to create magical digital products.
Under Shehryar’s leadership, Übermind grew to a team of 160 übies, fully bootstrapped with no outside funding, designing and building award winning apps for companies including REI, Target, CNN, and Alaska Airlines.
In 2011, after heavy inbound interest, Übermind was acquired by Deloitte, the world’s largest professional services firm. As a senior partner, Shehryar spent the next 6 years launching, building and growing Deloitte Digital, taking all of the attributes that made Ûbermind so successful and combining them with the depth and global reach of a Big-4 consulting firm, defining a new category of services company - Creative Digital Consultancy. During this time, Shehryar helped Fortune 100 retail, healthcare, travel & hospitality, manufacturing, and automotive clients drive digital transformation.
In 2017, Shehryar left the firm to return back to his roots and started consulting, advising, and investing in tech startups and hyper-specialized professional services companies (many of them founded by former übies) .
Sterling Wilson
Sterling is a senior executive with extensive experience building startups into significant companies. His demonstrated accomplishments include: delivery of three successful liquidity events generating significant returns for private company shareholders, developing and executing company strategy, selling and establishing executive relationships with customers, fundraising from venture capitalists and strategic investors, identifying and managing company acquisitions and taking a company public.
Sterling is currently the President, CEO and member of the Board of Directors of Shiftboard, a venture-capital backed company that is an industry leader in SaaS enterprise workforce scheduling. Since assuming control of Shiftboard, the company has raised over $25M in venture capital and has increased revenues over 400%.
Sterling was the President and member of the Board of Directors of Qpass, a market leading digital commerce infrastructure company. At Qpass, he was responsible for fundraising and on-going relationships with the company’s venture capital and strategic investors, managing the company as its annual revenues grew from $3 million to over $85 million and leading the sale of Qpass to Amdocs for $275 million.
Prior to Qpass, Sterling was Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Operations at Concur Technologies, a market leader in SaaS expense report management. At Concur, he was the 5th employee of the company and was instrumental in managing its growth from a startup to a public company with over 400 employees operating in 17 domestic and 4 international markets. He managed Concur’s IPO and secondary offering and was responsible for fundraising for the company when it was private from multiple venture capital firms.
Sterling was also the Chief Financial Officer of Contact Software International, the makers of ACT!, when it was sold to Symantec.
Sterling is a member of the Board of Directors at Koverse, a data intelligence solutions platform and the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.
Kevin Riegelsberger
Kevin has a 40-year track record of leading software companies to significant growth and profitability. In fall of 2010 Kevin was hired as President / COO of Avalara, Inc. a fast growing Seattle company providing a cloud based software platform that provides an end-to-end suite of sales and other transactional tax compliance solutions worldwide. For the 6 years, Kevin’s focus was on growing the company, while helping to raise over $200 million in working capital to drive the company’s expansion in new markets and new industries. From 2014 through 2016 he concentrated responsibility for Avalara’s Strategic Initiatives and string of acquisitions – acquiring and managing these various business units and geographic expansion. Kevin started at Avalara when there were just 80 employees. The company now has over 1,500 employees, offices in 4 countries and a successful IPO in June of 2018. Kevin retired from Avalara in January 2017 and remained an advisor to company until August 2019.
In 2001 in the aftermath of the Internet bubble, Kevin merged together two struggling commercial banking software companies. As CEO, he oversaw the ‘turn around’ of Seattle based CapitalStream from a struggling pre-revenue start-up with significant cash burn into an industry leader with positive cash generation and EBITDA. In early 2008, he successfully sold the company to HCL Technologies.
In the early 1980’s Kevin founded one of the industry’s leading and largest financial and ERP software application providers, Platinum Software Corp. (now known as Epicor). In his 15+ years at Platinum the company grew from a 7-person startup to a publicly traded company with $400 million in revenue. At Platinum, Kevin held various senior-level executive positions in operations, sales, channel development and technology development. During his final 4 years, he was responsible for all international operations with approximately $100 million in revenue and 350 employees located in all major international markets.
Kevin is a strong hands-on leader, with effective operational skills and a style focused on results oriented performance. His ability to dive deep into the details to understand a business and its strategic levers is coupled with his experience building and managing strong, performing teams. During his career he primarily focused on early stage companies’ growth to significant enterprises. He is a well-known and highly respected executive, both in the software industry, as well as with several Seattle and Silicon Valley Venture Capital firms.
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